Changing Gender Role Portrayal in Media: Survey-Based Study

Gender role development is very important among children during the phase of their personality development. This results in the formation of gender identity, which later on determines the type of gender role exhibited by the child in later life. Home is the main platform from where the key features of personality for a child is shaped up. Similarly, variable gender roles are also being taught by the family members. The growing media and its impact also play significant role in this regard. The current research made an account of how the gender role portrayal is changing in media and its respective impact on gender role shift in the society. This objective was achieved by conducting a survey on the content portrayed in a Pakistani movie “Ek Thi Marium” (2016). Findings suggest that the media today is displaying a changed gender role instead of gender stereotypical portrayal. It could help future researches to identify the modern trends and to study the effect of these variations among individuals of different age groups.

Childhood: Social Development

This chapter provides a complement to the previous chapter through a consideration of parents’ beliefs about children’s social development. Five topics are considered: emotional development (including emotion recognition and emotion regulation), aggression (including bullying), moral development, peer relations, and gender-role development. These topics are not neatly compartmentalized; rather, aspects of two or more often flow together as children deal with their social worlds. Controlling one’s emotions, for example, may be necessary to avoid an aggressive act, which in turn may help to maintain good social relations with others. The author explores these interrelations throughout the chapter.

On the Origin of Beliefs about the Sexual Orientation and Gender-role Development of Children Raised by Gay-male and Heterosexual Parents: An Italian Study

In three studies, heterosexual participants were presented with descriptions of heterosexual and gay-male parents. Importantly, the level of gender-role conformity of the gay-male parents was experimentally manipulated, resulting in their level of gender-role conformity ranging from high to low. Compared to the son of a heterosexual couple, the son of all gay-male couples had a lower expected likelihood of developing as heterosexual. This result was independent of the level of gender-role conformity of the gay-male couples (study 1–3). The beliefs about the gender-role development of the son, in terms of anticipated masculinity (study 1), gender stereotyping (study 2), and affective adjustment (study 3), mapped onto the level of gender-role conformity of the parents, regardless of their sexual orientation. Also, heterosexual parents were consistently judged more positively than gay-male parents, independently of their level of gender-role conformity (study 1–3). Results were discussed within the theoretical framework of stereotypes about gay-male parenting.

Images and Gender Role Development of Filipino Women on Selected Short Stories

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Young Children’s Risk-Taking: Mothers’ Authoritarian Parenting Predicts Risk-Taking by Daughters but Not Sons

We investigated how mothers’ parenting behaviors and personal characteristics were related to risk-taking by young children. We tested contrasting predictions from evolutionary and social role theories with the former predicting higher risk-taking by boys compared to girls and the latter predicting that mothers would influence children’s gender role development with risk-taking occurring more in children parented with higher levels of harshness (i.e., authoritarian parenting style). In our study, mothers reported their own gender roles and parenting styles as well as their children’s risk-taking and activities related to gender roles. The results were only partially consistent with the two theories, as the amount of risk-taking by sons and daughters did not differ significantly and risk-taking by daughters, but not sons, was positively related to mothers’ use of the authoritarian parenting style and the girls’ engagement in masculine activities. Risk-taking by sons was not predicted by any combination of mother-related variables. Overall, mothers who were higher in femininity used more authoritative and less authoritarian parenting styles. Theoretical implications as well as implications for predicting and reducing children’s risk-taking are discussed.

Chairperson or chairman? – A study of Chinese EFL teachers’ gender inclusivity

Given the potential influence of teachers’ linguistic practice on children’s language use and gender role development, the present study seeks to examine the extent of linguistic discrimination present in teachers’ language. A total of 215 Chinese EFL teachers were invited to participate in the survey, which included a series of elicitation tests on their selection of English words for occupational titles, and the choice of generic pronouns anaphoric to people of unknown gender. The findings revealed that, while gender-biased language is still widely used, non-sexist linguistic reform has had an impact on Chinese EFL teachers, some of whom have expressed a concern with regard to avoiding sexist language. The study also found that choice of generic pronouns co-varied with such factors as semantic meaning, word structure and the gender stereotypes associated with particular occupations.